In prehistoric times, the islet was not an island at all. Saliagos sat on a land bridge — a narrow neck of terrain connecting Paros to Antiparos — that existed through much of the Neolithic period and as late as the Byzantine era before subsiding beneath rising sea levels. This means the early settlers were not choosing an isolated rock. They were choosing a position on a through-route, a place where the land narrowed between two larger islands, with the open Aegean on one side and the sheltered channel on the other. The settlement's location made practical sense: proximity to fishing grounds, access to both islands, and a defensible site that also had one of the earliest known fortification systems in Greece. When the excavations of 1964–65 uncovered the settlement's layout, the evidence suggested continuous occupation for roughly 300 years — long enough for the community to develop distinct ceramic and artistic traditions.

Among the finds from Saliagos, three marble figurines stand out. The most celebrated is a small female figure — voluptuous, seated, with crossed legs — known informally as the "Fat Lady of Saliagos." The figure represents a fertility symbol, and her form connects her to similar finds on Naxos and to clay figurines from the mainland. More striking, perhaps, is what she anticipates: the abstract marble Cycladic figurines of the Bronze Age, those spare, elegant forms that became so influential in twentieth-century art, trace their ancestry to this Neolithic tradition. Two other figurines from Saliagos are far more abstract, their forms reminiscent of a violin. They have no recognizable predecessors, and their relationship to the later Cycladic abstract style is unmistakable. Whatever the Saliagos carvers were reaching toward, the sculptors of the Bronze Age Cyclades found it.

The obsidian tools recovered from Saliagos tell a story about trade across what would have been significant stretches of open sea. More than 25,000 artifacts were recovered, including over 1,100 blades — scrapers, spikes, cutting edges, and harpoon tips. The obsidian itself came almost exclusively from the volcanic island of Milos, 60 kilometers to the southwest. Occasionally, material from Gyali in the Dodecanese also appears, indicating connections across nearly 200 kilometers of the Aegean. These were not accidental arrivals. Someone on Saliagos knew where Milos was, had the means to get there and back, and maintained that trading relationship over generations. The scale of obsidian use — over 25,000 pieces — suggests the community was not merely self-sufficient but embedded in a wider network. The tools were made on the island itself; the raw material traveled to reach the craftsman.

Faunal remains from the excavation give an unusually direct glimpse into daily life on Saliagos. Tuna predominated in the diet — a detail that carries its own resonance, because tuna are no longer regularly found in this part of the Aegean, suggesting that six thousand years of fishing pressure has altered the sea itself. Sheep and goats provided meat, wool, and milk; cattle and pigs appear in smaller quantities. Emmer wheat and barley were cultivated. The settlement was a farming community, but it was also a fishing community, and the combination sustained it for three centuries. The burial sites have sunk below sea level with the rest of the land bridge, so no grave goods have been found — an absence that leaves the spiritual and ritual life of Saliagos largely invisible to archaeology. What the community believed, how they mourned their dead, what stories they told about the sea surrounding them: those things are lost.